On the campaign trail in Nevada

Melvin and I just spent several days together knocking on doors in Reno and Sparks, looking for voters supporting Hillary Clinton and Democratic Senate candidate Catherine Cortez-Masto. UniteHERE/Culinary Workers Local 226 has been hard at work here for months; Melvin started right after Labor Day. This is not new for Melvin. His mother brought him along as a teenager on a canvass in 2012. That year, he joined the team for the last three weeks, decided he could do more with his life than join the Marines, and ended up in community college. Now he is a seasoned pro, charming and cajoling voters with gusto.

Nevadans know their votes are important. They've been bombarded by TV ads for months. Their phones ring constantly. One of the inducements we had to offer to people we with talked with was that, if they used the early voting opportunity that begins today, they'll stop hearing from us.

Some unscientific observations:

• Because Nevadans are so used to this attention from campaigns, and seemingly a little flattered by it, they open their doors more readily than in other places where I've done this work.

• Because of this willingness, and perhaps also because I've turned into a white-haired old person, voters seemed far less afraid of me when I knock than I've become inured to. Another older woman had the same observation.

• I encountered a gratifying number of gay households. I don't expect that in a place that feels to me "suburban." Silly me.

• A small, but significant, number of the voters I encountered had met/seen Cortez-Masto. Las Vegas is the overwhelming center of population in the state, but government is in the north where Reno is the big place, so a woman who has been state attorney general for a decade is a known quantity.

• Whenever I met someone who was undecided about choice for president, I asked that person to give me a reason they would vote for Trump. Nobody came up with one.

Current polls show Clinton pulling ahead in Nevada and Cortez-Masto pulling into a tiny lead. She's getting the help of the kind of ground get-out-the-vote operation I joined up with all over the state; that can pull a candidate through. Should Cortez-Masto win, she'll be the first Latina elected to the Senate.***

I've had fun in the past making sociological observations about the food provided by campaigns. UniteHERE broke the pattern with this breakfast offering, though the inevitable pizza turned up the next day. But no donuts!***

Reno is a bearable size small city surrounded by stark desert and mountains. This was the view out my window.

The casinos are as ludicrous as might be expected. But Circus Circus was cheap and efficient. And what's not to like about a hotel that lines its corridors with pictures of staff like this one? It is also the sole union hotel in town.***

This local Libertarian gets the prize for the best sign I walked by. Doubt if he'll get many votes, but everyone needs a laugh in this season. Only 17 days to go ...

Bonus cat blogging

I treated myself just now to a run along the Bay shoreline in San Mateo County and this was what I encountered:

Neither of these critters were shy. I assume they are clients of the Homeless Cat Network:

Friday cat blogging

Imagine seeing this when you open your eyes in the morning. Many times, Morty is right there on the pillow next to our faces.

Media consumption diet for this election year

Friends have asked me what I read to keep informed during this awful election. I read too much for my peace of mind, I think.

But since I've posted on this topic before, I do notice I've changed my sources somewhat.

For a long time, I've paid for and read the New York Times. I also regularly read the Guardian; it has done terrific work recording the hundreds of killings by U.S. police departments. And this election season, the Washington Post successfully lured me to pay up for its coverage. For months, it seemed to be doing the most thorough job of digging into Donald Trump's many shady enterprises. David Fahrenthold has been THE essential source of Trump revelations. The Wapo columnists are interesting, especially Greg Sargent and Paul Waldman at The Plum Line.

Several individual reporters/pundits have provided exceptional coverage and insight. Farai Chideya has offered profiles of subsegments of the electorate. Jamelle Bouie, chief political correspondent at Slate provides historically grounded commentary from an African American perspective. And Rebecca Traister at New York has succeeded in describing consistently and thoughtfully how woman hatred plays out in this contest.

Two newer journalism sites have often outpaced the legacy news media organizations, carving out niches that begged to be filled. I sure hope Vox thrives. There's amazing journalism coming from Ezra Klein's baby. And I find Talking Points Memo essential, not so much for their click bait outrage snippets, as for Joshua Marshall's historians perspective on the circus.


But probably the most important shift in my media consumption diet has been the addition of numerous podcasts. This has to do with being retired from the paid fray. I'm running and walking and photographing with delight. And at the same time I'm listening. Often this means audiobooks, but for the last six months it has frequently meant podcasts. The Vox guys (and Sarah Kliff) contribute The Ezra Klein Show and The Weeds. These provide interesting, thoughtful, background on just about anything in the news. I don't always (often?) agree with all expressed here, but that is what makes these productions interesting. Another podcast I value a lot is Code Switch: a conversation about race and identity. Finally I should mention one election focussed production, The United States of Anxiety, a series well worth listening to which digs into race and class dynamics as this season reveals them in suburban Long Island. It is terrific journalism. The first three of these I'll still be listening to after November 8.

On claiming our victories along the way

I'm in Reno this week, knocking on doors with members of the Culinary Workers of Nevada (UNITE-HERE) trying to push out the vote for Catherine Cortez-Masto. Cortez-Masto would be the first Latina in the Senate, nothing to sneeze at. Yes, this will help win Nevada for Hillary Clinton too.

So this seems a good moment to share Erudite Partner's latest TomDispatch article: Why Fighting for Justice Is Like Surfing.

... How do outrageous ideas — for example, that women are human beings, or that the U.S. locks up way too many people, or even that gay people should be able to get married if they want to — suddenly morph into everyday commonsense? It’s rarely an accident. It almost always involves dedicated people working away for years on an issue, often unnoticed, before it seems suddenly to surge into general awareness. ...

Read it all at the link. It will cheer you up.

And if this ugly election gets you down, do something. There's nothing more cheering than working for justice. You don't have to go far afield as I have; there are almost always necessary local campaigns that are organized to put you to use. Really -- working together with others for our victories is part of enjoying them.

The worst ballot ever: part three, San Francisco measures

Can it really be that having spent hours on the state propositions, I now have City Measures A through X plus RR to try to comprehend? Yes, it can. Here goes:

Measure A: School bonds We need to fund the schools. (See also state Prop. 51.) Yes.

Measure B: City College parcel tax We need to fund City College. (See also the Community College Board.) Yes.

Measure C: Affordable housing loans We voted bonds in 1992 for seismic upgrades and some of that money is still around. This redirects it to affordable housing. Yes.

Measure D: appointments to vacant elected offices Since Willie Brown's time (1996-2004), mayors have frequently been able to overturn the will of the voters by replacing uncooperative supervisors with more malleable ones. Sometimes a sitting supervisor won higher office; sometimes the mayor dangled a plum appointment. This would stop that practice by requiring a special election for any vacated seat within 180 days. Let the people vote! Yes.

Measure E: Street trees WTF? The Department of Public Works has been passing off responsibility for trees on sidewalks (often the work of Friends of the Urban Forest) to property owners. Too many of these would rather cut the trees than assume the cost of care. This would raise $19 million to cover the cost of city care of the trees by a parcel tax based on property frontage. We'd be willing to pay for the care of our tree. Yes.

Measure F: Youth voting in local elections Would allow 16 and 17 year olds to vote in San Francisco elections. If we can pass this, we'll be emulating Scotland. That seem like a pretty sane place. Youth activists jammed up the system to get this on the ballot. It's a great story. Yes.

Measure G: Department of Police Accountability This isn't going to solve the problem of the San Francisco Police Department running wild in communities of color. That's going to take "reconstitution," starting over with a command structure that comes from outside the old boy network and current police union. This would give what has been called the Office of Civilian Complaints at least a tiny amount of independence. Yes.

Measure H: Public Advocate New York has one of these and it seems to have got a pretty good mayor, Bill de Blasio, out of it. A Public Advocate's job is to make sure you’re getting fair treatment from the government. My termed out supervisor David Campos thinks we could use one; Campos is a smart guy so I am willing to give it a whirl. Yes.

Measure I: Funding for seniors and adults with disabilities This is a "set-aside" -- a budget category that legislators won't be able to wheel and deal with. I don't like that sort of thing. We elect people to figure out how to make all the interests get their piece; they should do their jobs. Yet I also know that some populations get screwed by the "regular" process. Am I really going to vote against old people? No. So, reluctantly, yes.

Measure J: Homeless services and transportation Well we certainly need them, so yes.

Measure K: Sales tax increase But apparently San Francisco can't have homeless services and transportation unless we also vote an additional sales tax. This is extortion. Let the tech billionaires pay for keeping the city whole! Apparently we can't do the obvious -- tax the people with the money -- so we have to do this. Very reluctantly, yes.

Measure L: Muni oversight This would let the supervisors appoint some of the members of the board of the transit system. Currently the mayor appoints all of them. Since nobody in their right mind thinks the mayor stands up for the interests of anyone but developers and tech money men, it would be helpful to introduce some popular friction into an otherwise closed system. Yes.

Measure M: Housing and development commission This aims to move some power over development away from the Mayor's Office because in recent seasons, the Mayor's Office has seemed to be shilling for developers rather than acting in the interests of all San Franciscans. Measure like this are what happens when people feel excluded from control over their homes. Yes.

Measure N: Non-citizen voting in School Board elections Sure -- remember whose kids are in the schools. These kids are our future. This is not a crazy San Francisco novelty: it happens in some parts of Maryland and Chicago. Yes.

Measure O: Office development in Hunters Point Lennar is a big corporate developer, long beloved of our mercenary city fathers going back to Willie Brown. It's always been their hope to develop the old Navy property and the city's last Black community by giving it away to Lennar. This would violate existing city rules which limit office development because developers never pay for the infrastructure and transit costs their projects create. The rest of us pay for that stuff while the corporations take the gravy. Lennar already won bounteous permits in Hunters Point. Enough. No.

Measure P: Competitive bidding for affordable housing San Francisco has an experienced cast of nonprofit housing developers based in our different communities such as Chinatown, the Mission, etc. This would require three bids for any city project, forcing groups that have managed to arrive at an intricate web of interconnections to compete. If there weren't three bids, a nonprofit housing project could not go forward.. Talk about the kind of over-regulation that conservatives (like the measure's conservative author Mark Farrell) usually rave against. It almost makes you think that the author doesn't want any nonprofit housing at all. No.

Measure Q: Tents on the sidewalk This is another Hate the Homeless measure. We vote on this sort of thing every few years. Street camping is already illegal -- but after all, we must Hate the Homeless. NO.

Measure R: Neighborhood crime unit Great, we've got a supervisor wanting us to vote to require the SFPD to focus on "quality of life" issues. That is, more Hate the Homeless. How about an initiative to disarm these killers on the loose among the communities of color? There's a bit of micro-managing I could get behind. NO.

Measure S: Hotel tax allocation We already tax hotel visits. Let's put some of that into housing homeless families. Yes.

Measure T: Lobbyist contributions Bars certain lobbyist contributions to candidates, though it is not clear whether many would escape its prohibitions. This kind of law often just moves money around. Still we have to try. Yes.

Measure U: Affordable housing requirements This would let developers off the hook for building as large a proportion of housing units for low income people as the current law requires -- and thus raise their profits. San Francisco is a profitable place to build. Make them recognize that the city's citizens retain some rights to control what they build and how many of us they can force out for their gain. NO.

Measure V: Sugary beverages tax We certainly should tax sodas! The beverage industry is trying to describe this as a "grocery tax". Sugar water is not my idea of groceries. This is coming; they can only hold it off for so long. Yes.

Measure W: Mansion tax This would raise the transfer tax on properties that sell for more than $5 million. I can't believe it would kill the buyers and sellers. Yes.

Measure X: Arts and industrial space retention San Francisco wouldn't be San Francisco if there were no place for the arts and small shops. But if the tech money gets its way, we'll have nothing but gleaming steel and orange paneled condos. This tries to help. Yes.

Measure RR: BART bonds I like BART (our subway). It's expensive, unless, like me, you are on senior fares, whereupon it is the best bargain around. It was designed for commuters from suburbs while we could really use more lines to get around town. But we need to fund its upkeep. Yes.

Part one: federal, state and local candidates.
Part two: state propositions

The worst ballot ever: part two, state propositions

The candidates on my crazy California ballot were the easy part. Here I'll pass along how I voted on the 17 state ballot measures. Yes, this is democracy gone berserk. There is no way to make informed choices on all of this. Worse, having just been out of the state for two months, I'm nowhere near as on top of these as I might be. But here goes:

Prop. 51: School bonds Since we've made it almost impossible to raise taxes, we issue bonds. The general election has reminded me how important education might be to preserving decency. Yes

And this little six-year-old said: "Because the other guy called someone a piggy, and you cannot be president if you call someone a piggy."

from Michelle Obama, Oct. 14, 2016

Prop. 52: Medi-Cal hospital fee This seems to be about making private hospitals pay their fair share. Yes

Prop. 53: Revenue bond vote This would make us vote on more items we know nothing about; longer ballots ahead. It isn't always comfortable, but in general we're smarter to delegate most governing to our legislators. No

Prop. 54: Legislative sunshine Makes the legislature publish what is in bills before votes and requires steaming video of all sessions. Yes though weakly. You can't entirely legislate transparency. If some want to play tricks, they'll find ways.

Prop. 55: Tax extension on the rich No brainer here. These are tax rates that already exist. We can't have the state we want unless it is paid for. Yes.

Prop. 56: Cigarette tax Hell, Yes!

Prop 57: Earlier parole This one has parts. It would open the possibility of parole for 30,000 non-violent felons and allow prison authorities to credit inmates with "good behavior." All fine and good, but it also shifts the decision on whether to try juveniles as adults from prosecutors to judges. That might turn out to be a significant reform as prosecutors have too many tools to get easy plea agreements as it stands. All these are baby steps toward dealing with a a racist, crazy-quilt system, but better than the status quo. Yes.

Prop. 58: English language learning This repeals one of California's racial backlash initiatives (Prop. 227) from the 1990s when the white electorate was trying to wish away the emerging majority of color. We effectively outlawed bilingual education with that one. These days we appreciate that bilingual education can be an effective strategy for ensuring that newcomer children learn in the public schools. About time! Yes.

Prop. 59: Overturning Citizens United Puts us on record as wanting the Supremes to allow regulation of corporate money in elections. No legal effect, but a cause about which reformers are passionate. Yes.

Prop. 60: Condoms in porn films This is the sort of thing that makes the state a national laughing stock. Rightly. Both Dems and GOPers think this is unnecessary, stupid law. We'll probably pass it. Not sure if I can bring myself to vote on it.

Prop. 61: Drug prices From the ads I've seen on TV, Big Pharma thinks this one might cost them. It enables the state to mandate that it pay no more for drugs than the Veterans Administration. Anything to nick Big Pharma. Yes.

Prop. 62: Death penalty repeal Finally something I know something about. Long time readers here will know I spent all of 2012 campaigning for a previous version and it lost narrowly. The death penalty is arbitrary (only about three county prosecutors call for it), crazy expensive, and inevitably racist in application. A federal judge who looked into it called it "dysfunctional" and "beyond repair." People realize this when they think about the reality that we have something like 750 men on death row and haven't executed any of them since 2006. Californians have had four more years to learn that the promise of retribution or closure embodied in the death penalty is cruel phony-baloney. Yes.

Prop. 63: Ammunition sales Most anything to restrict wider access to guns seems right to me. This is a step in the right direction. The law would require background checks for ammunition purchases and establish a system to get guns away from people with felonies or domestic violence orders. Yes.

Prop. 64: Marijuana legalization Gonna happen. About time no one goes to jail for pot. Yes.

Prop. 65: Carry out bags The plastic bag makers want us to help their polluting industry. This is a con. Ain't it great that we have a system in which, if you spend enough money, you can make us vote on anything? No.

Prop. 66: Death penalty enforcement Prosecutors strike back. Recognizing that sentiment against the death penalty is growing statewide, they want to try to resuscitate it. It is not that they are naturally blood thirsty (at least most of them.) But we have to understand how the "justice" system actually works. Those jury trials you see on TV are vanishingly rare. Most people charged with crimes make a plea bargain with the prosecutor for an agreed sentence rather than take the expense or risk of trial. Prosecutors love having the death penalty in their armory -- "take this plea or we'll make your offense a death case." That's powerful stuff. The so-called reforms in Prop. 66 won't work. I have great confidence that the capital defense lawyers will still be able to gum up the works -- and that California therefore will be no more likely to save money or execute offenders if this passes. Prosecutors don't need us to make their job easier. NO

Prop. 67: Plastic bag ban Now we're talking. San Franciscans have proved able to do without plastic bags; the rest of the state can too. This is what the plastic companies fear: we don't need their polluting product. Yes.

Having worked through these, I'm a little surprised how many I am voting "yes" on. That won't discourage the interests that put them on the ballot, but quite a few seem sensible or perhaps necessary because legislators can't or won't dare pass them the old-fashioned way.

Part one: federal, state and local candidates.

The worst ballot ever: part one, the candidates

My crazy California ballot has arrived and I aim to get it out the door ASAP. Why the hurry? If the San Francisco registrar is competent, and the campaigns are competent, I'll then drop off the radar and stop getting robocalls, human calls, and bushels of campaign mail. I don't count on it, but it seems worth a try.

As far as California federal and state officeholders go, there's not much that matters here. I'll vote for Kamala Harris for U.S. Senate with a certain lack of fervor. That's not entirely her fault; her only opponent on the ballot is another, slightly less desirable, Democrat as a consequence of the deeply discriminatory top-two primary system we have in this state. When enthusiasm and accident align, small parties and even some Republicans at the state level will never even get to put their case to the voters in the general election here where Democratic registration is 44 percent to GOP 29 percent. This is just wrong. Primaries should not limit which political parties get to present their case. As for Harris herself, she's been an acceptable Attorney General and would rise in my estimation if she ordered her office to investigate the case of Amilcar Perez Lopez, killed by the SFPD. But I am not holding my breath about that before the election.

My Congresscritter Nancy Pelosi will be re-elected in a walk. That's good for the country; she's a good leader for wobbly House Democrats. She is sometimes far to the right of her constituents, but at this point her constituency is the Democratic Party, not us.

I do face a State Senate race that matters. Our incumbent is termed out (stupid rule) and I'll be voting for Jane Kim. She wasn't my first choice some years ago for the San Francisco supervisor seat she currently occupies, but I was impressed even then by the competence and energy of her campaign. Should the quality of a campaign matter in choosing a candidate? Perhaps it is not the most important variable, but it matters to me as someone who works in elections. She's been a generally progressive supervisor and not part of the tech money club that is transforming the city without residents consent. Her opponent never met a landlord or developer he didn't cozy up to.

No Assembly vote. I'm still unhappy after seeing a run-of-the-mill big money chasing Democrat succeed to a seat which had been occupied by the termed-out progressive pol I admire most, Tom Ammiano. Local enmities run deep.

I don't think we should be voting on judges. It's a bad practice, exposing aspirants to the temptations of campaigning -- raising money and charming barely concerned voters. It's really hard for most of us to form intelligent opinions about judicial qualifications. Judges usually agree, retiring midterm so governors can put in their choice. Then they stand for election as incumbents, sometimes drawing challengers. This year, we're facing several aspirants for an opening as a Superior Court Judge (the lowest tier of the state system.) I'm voting for Victor Hwang, convinced by the Bay Guardian endorsements. In this case, it is a team thing: Hwang's opponent comes out of Mayor Ed Lee's big tech money axis. These guys need as many knocks up side the head as we can give them, so Hwang gets my vote.

As a resident of San Francisco's Supervisor District 9, I'm voting on one of these this year too. That's easy. Hillary Ronen is one smart lady. Like that other Hillary, she comes across as deep in the policy weeds; I've watched her sit in meetings taking in the noise and crosstalk, then raise points that show she is already thinking through the thicket of accumulated law and practice that might matter to achieve implementation. And she's part of a team, a slate of candidates who will work to assure that Ed Lee can't entirely give away the city to his tech money backers. The others, each running their own local races are Sandra Fewer in District 1; Aaron Peskin in District 3; Dean Preston in District 5; and Kimberly Alvarenga in District 11.

Ah yes -- then we get to the School Board. I am deeply certain that most of us should not be voting in this contest. Those of us without kids or other young relatives in the schools, what do we know about the kind of local education policies which these people determine? Not much. I worked very hard once to elect a School Board candidate and she not only won, she came in first out of eight or so. Consequently I know what it takes to get elected here: the city votes for 1) the people whose names they encountered most often and 2) candidates who tickle the various identity groups into which we divide ourselves. I think I'll follow the Bay Guardian suggestions but I can't manage to feel I have any worthwhile arguments for these choices.

Then there is the Community College Board. Because City College has been fighting for its life for the last half decade, I feel somewhat better informed here. Because San Franciscans struggled long and hard to preserve the sort of community-serving institution that decades of commitment had built (rather than succumb to pressure to downsize into a career certification mill), we've proved we want the school to continue. We've even voted bonds and taxes to pay for it. Shanell Williams, Tom Temprano, and Rafael Mandelman were in the thick of the fight to save City College. Let's see them nurture it!

I get to vote for Bevan Dufty for BART (rapid transit) board. It feels strange; I worked for his opponents when he was District 8 supervisor. But he's been working for improve conditions for homeless people in the years since and my friends who labor in those vineyards give him good marks. So, okay.

Schadenfreude

Can I just say what a pleasure it is to watch a slimy tech billionaire throw good money down the drain?

Saturday scenes: a memorial for a cyclist

On a San Francisco street corner, an obsolete(?) fire call box. What's this?

Friends of Kirk Janes have told his story on stickers wrapped around the post.

It's been eight years, but he is remembered, at least until the city street cleaners come through to scrape off his story.

Hope in a tough season

Here at the bitter end (that seems the right adjective, doesn't it?) of this nasty campaign, it is great to share a story from someone for whom taking part is an occasion for hope.

Yaritza Garcia is too young to vote herself and her family members are undocumented. But she believes it will make the lives of her family and friends better if she works to get those who can vote out to the polls.

Young people of color are always told that we don’t know what is happening around us. I was told that I wouldn’t be able to make a change for myself or other people around me. But I feel voting gives me the freedom to prove them otherwise. One vote can always make a difference.

Many people don’t get the chance to vote since they don’t have legal status or they aren’t citizens. My mother and sister are not allowed to vote. Despite living here for decades, they never get the opportunity to vote and improve their quality of life. That’s why young voters of color need to vote. People of color are the majority of the population in California. However, most youth of color find it difficult to vote because work, school, and other priorities come first. But also voting information, like the propositions and how they impact communities, is not reaching them in a way that speaks to them. In a way, elections are set up in a way so that we don’t go vote. We are convinced that our votes don’t matter, therefore, we uphold the stereotype that we don’t care.

But if young voters of color aren’t turning out to vote, then who is going to help us get our voices and opinions to matter during elections? ... Can we continue to stand on the sidelines while others vote for us?

Ms. Garcia is a member of Californians for Justice, the organization to which so many readers of this blog contributed last summer.

For those of us who have been around too many political laps, cynicism is easy and safe. But refusing to hope can be self-indulgence; young people remind us to get over ourselves.

Friday cat blogging

Morty doing his thing: looking beautiful.

At home in the Mission ...

... where homes are wrenched from their occupants.

Tenants organized by Causa Justa spoke out against a landlord who changed the locks on their long-term home in front of a property management company on Valencia Street yesterday.

Displacement goes on; people fight back.

Election minutiae: NFL being upstaged?

American football and U.S. elections simulate warfare constrained by a framework of rules. This chart of TV ratings suggests our present unruly fray is sucking our attention from one national pastime to the other.

Data via MMQB.

Feminism in a Clinton White House

Continuing with my resolve to pay attention to what a Hillary Clinton presidency might/will be like, here's some fascinating banter from two New York Times reporters, Jodi Kantor and Susan Dominus. Kantor wrote what I considered a genuinely revealing book about the Obama White House. She's thought hard about this sort of thing.

[Jodi Kantor]: ... This could be messy. Defining the Feminist Thing to Do in a woman’s White House is likely to be a running riddle, because which is the project: role reversal or wiping away outdated roles altogether?. Perhaps the first husband should smash the outdated conventions of the presidential-spouse role, do away with the floral-botanical complex for good? Publicly discuss Syria policy and environmental protection, because who made the rule that smart presidential spouses don’t discuss that stuff, anyway? But the risk of undercutting or overshadowing Hillary Clinton is great, as we saw in the 2008 race.

Cosmically, it seems as if figuring this all out could be part of Bill Clinton’s penance for the damage he did years ago. He is unlikely to talk about it. First spouses have little incentive for public introspection — name the last deep interview Michelle Obama did — but his actions will speak volumes. ...

[Susan Dominus]: Of course, we do have a precedent for a first spouse who advised the president on foreign policy, and pretty much everything else, and that was Hillary Clinton. Many of her supporters at the time called that feminism; but as you suggest, if Bill were to play as much of a role in her presidency as she did in his (especially in his first term), it would look anything but feminist, to the public.

... I know I’m getting ahead of myself here, but it is comforting to realize that Hillary Clinton is probably not singular, that there will be other women running for president as serious candidates going forward. And possibly those elections will be far less fraught than this one. ...The recording has amplified, for many women, their sense of the urgency of this election. It’s not just that they can’t bear Trump, or that they love Hillary; it’s that the election is about something bigger now than just the office of the presidency. The recording put many women directly in touch with their outrage about the outdated, the exclusionary, the sexist, the predatory, the power-and-otherwise grabby. ...

The sexist environment created by electing the first woman U.S. president isn't going to go away just because HRC vanquishes Mr. GOP Id.

Scary debate takeaway

One of the many unfortunate consequences of the GOP serving up a fascist, sexist, white nationalist presidential candidate is that there's very little psychic and intellectual space left over within which to examine what the Democratic candidate is offering. At least that's how the Clinton/Trump race works for me. We have to elect Hillary -- and we almost certainly will -- but the horror of Trump almost precludes thinking about her.

So, for the record, I'm sharing Josh Marshall's take on Clinton's foreign policy pronouncements at Sunday nights' debate.

What bothered me was what Clinton said about Syria and Russia. I grant that Vladimir Putin seems to be trying to influence the election on Trump’s behalf and that he may have ambitions in Eastern Europe that could lead to serious conflict with NATO. But there’s a real danger in turning the Obama administration’s rift with Putin over the Ukraine and Syria into the grounds for a return to the Cold War. That’s what I heard Clinton doing during the debate.

The Obama administration’s primary adversary in Syria has been Bashar Assad’s regime. It [I think Marshall means Assad though some might debate this] has been responsible for transforming what was initially a civilian Arab Spring-type call for political reform into a brutal civil war that has degenerated into a contest between a dictator bent on retaining his rule even at the cost of destroying his own country and a ragged group of rebels led by Islamist terrorist organizations. Russia, which has historically backed Assad and has a naval base in Syria, has taken Assad’s side, and we have backed Assad’s opponents, while covertly cooperating with Russia and Assad’s other ally, Iran, in fighting one of these terrorist groups, ISIS. It’s a really ugly situation that defies easy answers or obvious choices for alliance.

But in characterizing the war in Syria, Clinton astonishingly blamed the war’s atrocities on “Russian aggression.” And she advocated setting up a “no-fly zone,” a proposal that if it were not seriously narrowed, could lead to an air war between the United States and Russia. The Obama administration has wisely rejected this kind of strategy. Should Clinton’s remarks be taken seriously? There is a precedent: in the 1960 presidential campaign, John Kennedy out-hawked Richard Nixon on Cuba. Kennedy’s hawkishness on Cuba led to the Bay of Pigs fiasco and to a fifty-five years of a destructive policy toward that country. Could Clinton’s posture during the campaign carry over to her presidency? That worries me. But I’ll still take my chances with her over Trump, and I suspect the country will, too, in November, regardless of who won last night’s debate.

My emphasis.

While covering Sunday's debate, Farai Chideya at 538 pointed out:

In one of the latest Clinton emails revealed by Wikileaks, she said in 2013: “To have a no-fly zone you have to take out all of the air defenses, many of which are located in populated areas. So our missiles, even if they are standoff missiles so we’re not putting our pilots at risk — you’re going to kill a lot of Syrians.” Tonight, she reiterated her support for a no-fly zone.

Clinton seems to instinctively lean toward policies that will increase the carnage. There has to be another way.

He means it.

And that is no joking matter. The big blowhard is running for Fuehrer.

I did not want to link to his Facebook feed, so I snipped this. His deplorable fans love it.

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving Day

From the sidewalks of San Francisco.

Heroes who took on the big babies

As we watch Trump (and the Republican Party) implode since the release of the tape of him gloating over sexual assault, how about a shout-out to some of the millions of women (and some men) who've put themselves in the line of fire to make powerful men's entitlement to women's bodies an unacceptable claim?

In no particular order:

• Planned Parenthood workers: who literally put themselves in the line of fire to ensure women receive basic health services.

• Nafissatou Diallo: New York City hotel maid who dared charge the head of the IMF, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, with rape. Sure, she turned out to want to make what cash she could out to the encounter, but hey, she needed the money and Strauss-Kahn, being smarter than Trump, was willing to pay up to avoid having his sexual exploits dragged out in court.

• Brock Turner's accuser who blew out the injustice system's circuits by demanding that a Stanford swimmer should suffer for "20 minutes of action" for humping a passed out female stranger. Let's also remember the two male Swedish student passersby who interrupted Mr. Turner's little party.

• Feminist bloggers who struggled to make a place for women's perspectives in a tech environment full of entitled creeps; and, like Jessica Valenti, Lindy West, Jamia Wilson and many more have been worn down by the hate spewed at them.

• Then there's Gamergate, a Twitter and social media kerfuffle in 2014, during which the deplorables on the alt-right web tried to drive women such as video game developers Zoë Quinn and Brianna Wu out of their cozy electronic man cave. Sexual shaming was their means; solidarity was the only defense.

• Hey, remember the crap my friend Renee Bracey Sherman takes every day for campaigning for women to be able to have safe, affordable abortions without guilt.

• For that matter, remember the crap Anita Hill took for calling out her boss, that would be silent Justice Thomas, for "sexual harassment". Her courage gave us language with which we talk about this stuff. Before her, sexual harassment was just what men in power did.

This list is just what I came up with in a random half hour. Millions of people, mostly but not all women, have got us to where Trump's behavior is no longer just normal. Please leave additional names of women who changed our standards about what big baby men can do to us in the comments.

Sighting

While pursuing my mission to recharge my depleted batteries, I ran around Golden Gate Park on Saturday. It was good to come across these campaigners for Dean Preston, the progressive candidate for Supervisor in San Francisco's District 5.

Saturday scenes and scenery: Menemsha Harbor

Change of seasons comes abruptly on Martha's Vineyard. In late August, the Prez leaves, a week later families take their children home for the school year, and after Labor Day, nearly all the summer crowd departs. The docks at the little fishing port of Menemsha are suddenly nearly empty.

A few private yachts still pass through; cooked lobster is still available from the two dockside fish markets.

But after the summer crowding, what feels notable is silent emptiness.

No one would think to attempt a quiet paddle inside the harbor in August; too much boat traffic then.

The jetty makes for a lovely walk at sunset.

Not shocked

I suppose I am supposed to have some sort of opinion about the Donald's pussy grabbing video. As a feminist from the era when the graphic at left was commonplace, I can't say I'm shocked or even slightly surprised. Unless they've undergone major re-education by women, I assume that young males, and those older ones suffering arrested development, all harbor the sort of deplorable desires Trump reveled in in 2005.

There seems no reason to assume Trump has grown beyond his infantile stage and considerable reason to suspect he hasn't.

Nicholas Kristof reports an earlier Trump episode from a woman who tried to do business with the big baby:

... Harth continued to meet Trump for business — and, she says, he continued to try to jump her. “He’d say, ‘Let’s go in my room, I want to lie down,’ and he’d pull me along. I’d say, ‘I don’t want to lie down,’ and it would turn into a wrestling match. … I remember yelling, ‘I didn’t come here for this.’ He’d say, ‘Just calm down.’”

Harth says that she worried about being raped by a man who weighed twice as much as she did, and at one point she vomited as a defense mechanism. But she says that he was never violent and genuinely seemed to assume sexual interest on her part; often he was playful as she was frightened: “His mind was in a totally different place than mine,” Harth recalls. “He thinks he’s God’s gift to women.”

So they think, until taught to think differently. Fortunately, more and more men are raised to think differently.***While hunting for the graphic, I learned the phrase is commonly attributed to Gloria Steinem, although Wikipedia sources it to an Australian woman, Irina Dunn. I had always connected it with Alison Bechdel. That just shows you where I get my culture.

Election minutiae: a long way from "home"

This is interesting. Voting for Trump correlates strongly with continuing to live close to the place where you were born and/or raised.

How people plan to vote appears to correspond, albeit broadly, with whether they decided to move away from where they grew up. According to the just-released PRRI/The Atlantic poll, 40 percent of Donald Trump’s likely voters live in the community where they spent their youth, compared with just 29 percent of Hillary Clinton voters. And of the 71 percent of Clinton voters who have left their hometowns, most—almost 60 percent of that group—now live more than two hours away.

Atlantic

When I reflect on this, it makes sense in ways that are a little deeper than "they are 'sticks in the mud' -- we're cosmopolitans."

I belong to a significant cohort who left "home" because home was not a place where we could grow into our complete selves. In my case that was because I was queer in another time, but I've known many others who took the "3000 mile solution" (it's such a big country) for other cultural and social reasons. Our horizons broadened.

Then there are an enormous number of people who left exhausted northern industrial areas for better opportunities (and sometimes better weather) by moving south. For years I sadly described the place of my birth, Buffalo, NY, as somewhere which anyone with any drive fled, leaving those without much gumption to run the place. That's harsh, but there is some truth in it. It's been hard for Buffalo but good for where folks landed. And so the collapse of the Rust Belt economy plays out: if, as seems likely, national and state level Democrats can break through in North Carolina and Florida through the combined votes of African Americans, newcomers from all over the world, and white migrants, this too will be a consequence of people leaving "home," often in the hope of "more."

So, naturally the worldwide Move-On equivalent, Avaaz, is working diligently to help register U.S. citizens abroad. Every little bit helps ...

Avaaz parading with mariachis in Mexico City

Friday cat blogging

The interloper cat is gone, returned to her people. His long absent human is home again. And, despite this snapshot, Morty is more a needy lover boy than a fierce defender of his turf. I mean, how dignified can you really be when you've fallen into a laundry basket?

Federalism is becoming creaky ...

Why should all those lightly populated states with a fraction of our numbers have the same number of Senators that California has?

Oh yeah -- because the Founders made a compromise to appease local loyalties -- read slave holding Southern oligarchs -- when they wrote the Constitution. This undemocratic residue of past injustice is one more legacy of white supremacy.

Election minutiae: "Captive Nations" still ache

A national election touches on both broad themes and niche concerns among small demographic groups. I'm fascinated when I see campaigns recognizing and speaking to the latter. This smidgen of Democratic messaging is a nice touch:

The Hillary Clinton campaign is meeting with swing-state leaders of Eastern European descent, encouraging ethnic debate watch parties and phone banks, and scheduling conference calls with Clinton allies from her State Department days as part of an aggressive effort to capitalize on Donald Trump’s embrace of Russian leader Vladimir Putin and his equivocal support for NATO.

For years, voters with Eastern Bloc roots embraced the Republican Party, viewing the GOP as an anti-communist bulwark and a champion of strength in the face of Russian aggression.

But the Republican nominee’s frequent praise of Putin and talk of conditional American backing for NATO members under attack has alarmed voters with close family ties to Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and other Eastern European countries, raising the prospect that they’ll bolt the top of the GOP ticket in November.

Politico

Having grown up on Buffalo in the 1950s and '60s, I am convinced they are onto something potent. In those days, Eastern European-origin immigrant communities, especially Poles and Ukrainians, were downright rabid in their anti-Russian passion, a passion that mourned their countries of origin as well as expressing their anti-Communism. They or their relatives had fled the Red Army and the killing fields of central Europe and they hated and feared the Russian colossus.

In their new country, many labored in the steel and auto industries. When national politicians came to town campaigning -- Richard Nixon, John Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy -- they'd be outside of Memorial Auditorium, picketing in the Buffalo cold and snow, demanding all comers remember their "Captive Nations."

As the industrial economy turned to rust, these people became largely Republican. Eastern European roots produced such Republican leaders as a couple of Ohio governors, George Voinovich (2003-2007) and John Kasich (2011-present). It's been two decades since the Soviet Union collapsed, but the community memory remains a force. The Clinton campaign seeks to tap into it in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Even a few votes might help.
***

Looking into this, I was surprised to learn the United States still observes an annual Captive Nations Week in July by presidential proclamation. Congress created the observance in 1959 and it still lives, presumably known largely among the groups Clinton is targeting.

My batteries need recharging ...

So in response to my friends' sensible suggestions, I tuned out the quadrennial unpleasantness on Tuesday and read trail running and training sites.

And I stumbled across this, from Mario Fraioli, this which perfectly captures the condition that a summer devoted to eldercare (which included a little running) has left me in this autumn.

The tendency to keep pushing in an effort to make progress is hardwired into my personality: Once I get going on something, I suck at shutting off for fear of not continually making gains. That’s not to say I never stop working during the day. I most certainly do, but when I “stop” working (a multifaceted endeavor for me) it’s rarely a deliberate, restful respite; it’s more of an excuse to temporarily invest my energy into some other project until I go back to whatever it is I was originally doing, even if I was “just” answering emails or editing an article while eating my lunch. ...

... It’s hard to be at your best when the battery is always operating at only a half or three-quarter charge (or less!). Constantly draining it all the way down without letting it recharge at regular intervals along the way is unsustainable practice, despite our best intentions to convince ourselves otherwise. ... There’s only so much juice in our batteries.

I’m often crawling into bed physically and emotionally spent at the end of it, much like when I was when I was training really hard many years ago. At best, I’ll wake up the next day with maybe a 50 or 60-percent charge. After another day of draining that down without properly resting and recharging, I might wake up at 40 percent. And then 30 percent. I’m not really being all that productive when trying to function at these levels but yet I keep pushing, which in small doses can be a necessary and beneficial step on the road to making progress. But going all-out all the time is a bunch of bullshit. ...

How long will recovery take? I currently have no idea. Trails will help, if I don't push too hard.

I'm pooped

Enjoy a fungi. Regular commentary will resume when I am restored.

Former detainee recounts CIA torture

Human Rights Watch has released video testimony from a Tunisian man who the U.S. stashed away for 14 years in prisons in Afghanistan. As reported by the Guardian, Lotfi al-Arabi El Gherissi describes previously unreported "techniques" used on him and others, including threatening him with an electrified chair, shoving his head repeatedly into a barrel of water, dousing him with cold water and then beating him while hung by his arms, and shoving something up his anus. In June 2015 he and another detainee, Ridha al-Najjar, were transferred without explanation or apology to Tunisia where he lives freely -- though disabled and penniless.

An accounting and a new beginning

Yesterday evening the two-day long Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah, the New Year, began. J.J. Goldberg at the Jewish Daily Forward sets the day's observances in the context of this strange and awful moment.

‘Today the world is born” — Hayom harat olam. These are among the most electric words in all of Jewish sacred liturgy. They’re recited by the congregation immediately after the blowing of the shofar, the ram’s horn, at midday on the New Year holiday, Rosh Hashanah.

The words are especially electric this year, because they bring home the fraught reality of the crossroads we’ve come to. Most of us, I suppose, take the image of Rosh Hashanah as “birthday of the world” to be a sort of metaphor. It sums up the spirit of reset and renewal that marks this season of repentance. It’s not literally the anniversary of the Big Bang. This year, though, the words take on a frighteningly literal meaning. We may not know exactly how or when the world was born. But we’re beginning to get a pretty good idea of when and how it can die.

We’ve been hearing the warnings for decades, but we’ve mostly ignored them. It all seemed too fantastical, the supposed consequences too far in the future, the preventive measures too expensive. Now the future is here: ice caps disappearing, glaciers melting, sea levels rising, coastal communities flooding. Strange tropical pests and diseases migrating northward, following the changing climate. Thousand-year monster storms happening yearly. Blizzards in Georgia, biblical floods in lower Manhattan, California in permanent drought. And we’ve barely begun.

... Rosh Hashanah, which begins on the evening of October 2, is a day for reflection and introspection, for looking around and within ourselves and taking an accounting. Yom Kippur, which comes 10 days later, is the day we sum up our accounting, take a deep look at our community and society and raise our voices in a plea to avert the evil decree that might be coming as a consequence of our actions. Election Day comes four weeks after that. Not in living memory has an election been so consequential. The sequence — Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Election Day — is a frequent source of wry jokes and overwrought sermons. This year it’s no joke.

... In plain language, our actions today determine our fate tomorrow, along with the fates of the earth and all its creatures who stand alongside us in spirit. Our readings for the rest of the day, indeed for the Ten Days of Awe, consist largely of steps on the road to repentance: acknowledgment that we must do better, prayers for the strength and wisdom to do what’s right and hope that our fate proves to be better than we fear we might deserve. ... We are all accountable as one body, all of humankind, indeed all the world’s creatures. In the final accounting our separate clans, tribes and nations don’t matter.

In large part our future depends on events beyond our control, originating in the vast, unknowable, infinite space that we can never fully understand. In the end, though, our fate is ours to decide. We are the creatures of the earth. All of us in our synagogues, churches and mosques, in our gleaming towers and squalid hovels, in our nests in the disappearing forests and our lairs beneath the warming, rising seas.

On this day each year we stand together in judgment and face the consequences for the actions we took during all our yesterdays. ...

While we can still act, we need not be constrained by what we have done yesterday. We will suffer what we cannot change, but there is still tomorrow.

Yet more evidence that Trump is a sociopath, from football

Fall weekends are for football, in my happy fantasy existence. That's irresponsible; I know. Taking pleasure in watching athletic young men risk their brains and bodies for the profits of the sport's barons is a guilty pleasure. Besides, elections mostly happen in the fall -- during too many years I've missed the football season entirely because there was something more important to attend to.

In 1983, we almost got a professional football league, the USFL, that played in the spring. That would have added an interesting wrinkle. The USFL was a breathe of fresh air, the spawning ground of a wide open style that challenged and eventually was adopted by the established NFL. We owe the USFL for such innovations as the 2 point conversion after a touchdown and instant replay. The new league created a bidding war for stars which raised the compensation of all professional football players.

Trump with a prize property, the great running back Herschel Walker

But the league failed economically after three seasons. Filmmaker Mike Tollin shot video highlight shows for the USFL, so he watched the league's failure from the sidelines, literally. In 2009, he made 30 for 30: Small Potatoes: Who killed the USFL? His short answer to the title's question: Donald Trump! Here's his description:

Many involved, from owners to coaches to players to fans to members of the media, believed that this new spring football league was something special. Three straight years the USFL did the unthinkable and plucked the Heisman Trophy winner away from the NFL. The spring games received good TV ratings and were played before larger than expected enthusiastic crowds. Rule changes made the game more exciting and unpredictable, and the spring league seemed the perfect bridge from the Super Bowl to Labor Day for a football-starved nation.

So what happened? Why didn't it last?

Well, it seems that a certain high-profile and impatient team owner, whose name now adorns towers and hotels and golf courses all over the world, had convinced his colleagues that the league should either move to a fall season and go head-to-head with the NFL, or fold its tents. So after three years of play, the USFL suspended play and focused its efforts on an anti-trust lawsuit against the NFL. And after the jury ruled the USFL owners would have to divvy up the princely sum of three dollars, the full amount of the settlement, the tents were indeed packed up hastily.

Tollin's film is fun because for many of its players and some owners, the USFL was football merged with fun, fulfilling a dream of professional play in intimate settings with other enthusiasts and among friendly fans. Those of us who appreciated USFL veterans who later became NFL stars like Steve Young and Doug Flutie can appreciate the delight with which they reminisce here.

But USFL owners were open to the ambitions of the real estate huckster who bought the Jersey franchise in the the second season. Trump sold the other owners on a dream of succeeding on the cheap. Instead of painstakingly nurturing a desirable new product, they would sue the NFL for acting as a monopoly. The film includes a clip of Trump with the lawyer he brought on for the job: Roy Cohn. Nominally they won, but the jury didn't see fit to award the USFL owners the big monetary damages they wanted and the league collapsed. One of the film's interviewee's summarized: "greed and patience don't live together very well."

As in so many other ventures, when Trump could not get what he wanted, he pulled down the edifice around him, and walked away blustering while others suffered. It was all about him. Oh yeah -- "that's business."

Filmmaker Mike Tollin has released a copy of Trump's note to him on being shown the documentary:

Small Potatoes: Who killed the USFL? is readily available for streaming and worth an odd hour for yet another window on the the Trump phenomenon. I was struck by how little the con man has changed over the years. Even in the 80s, he already had the patter and the silly hair. And he already felt no obligation to understand or take responsibility for the effects his actions might have on others around him. The guy is one sick puppy.

The bird is dead; long live the bird!

When the friend with whom I have been staying on Martha's Vineyard was born, there was still at least one heath hen alive on the island. The last known bird died in 1932 and the species is extinct.

In the colonial era, heath hens were extremely common in barrens along the Atlantic Coast from New Hampshire to Virginia. There is speculation that the bird served at the Puritan settlers' "first Thanksgiving" was a heath hen. In any case, they were such a staple of the diet among the poor that servants may have bargained not to be fed heath hen more than two or three times a week.

By the early 20th century, only a small population remained, all on Martha's Vineyard. The declining numbers stimulated a conservation effort, including a hunting ban and creation of the "Heath Hen Reserve" (today the Manuel F. Correllus State Forest). Though the heath hens are gone, this 5000 acre scrubland preserve remains. An 11 mile bike path runs around its perimeter.

And, unexpectedly, a good mile from any point accessible by car, a massive cast bronze statue memorializes lost creature, courtesy of the Lost Bird Project. Accounts of the heath hen do not suggest the bird was every quite so noble and imposing, though the males were given to loud mating displays. Although marked on tourist maps, the statue is an unexpected addition to a landscape without prominent features.

This sad tale of extinction nearly within living memory has made the bird the object of a project called Revive & Restore which aims at "genetic rescue." This summer, according to the Vineyard Gazette,

Ryan Phelan and Stewart Brand, the founders of Revive & Restore, an organization that aims to use genetics to rescue endangered species and revive extinct species, paid a brief visit to the Island this week to share news about rapid advancement in their work with the heath hen ...The most recent achievement is considered ground breaking: the potential culture of primordial germ cells from a greater prairie chicken. “This is the breakthrough. This is the news. This is potentially the game changer,” Mr. Brand said.

Beyond the intricacies of the science, the success so far with the heath hen project is also making a case for applying biotechnology to wildlife conservation, Ms. Phelan and Mr. Brand told a group of supporters... “This isn’t a fringe thing in conservation,” Vineyard conservationist and project advisor Tom Chase said. “This is the beginning of a new way, this is bringing back iconic species that are representative of big healthy habitats . . . . it’s a movement.”

Inevitably, the success of the effort to restore the heath hen will eventually require maintenance and restoration of a habitat in which the birds can thrive. That project may prove even more difficult than the genetic research now being carried on.